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  1. TopTop #3721
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Formula

    I'm going to let you in
    On a secret: You’re not alone
    Looking for the one, right way
    The way where no mistake
    Is possible, the place
    Of no loss, no deluge
    On the wedding day, no lies
    Or rumors about one’s love life,
    No anger, no sirens on a quiet
    Night. Not the only one convinced
    There is a right way.

    Here's some suggestions we’ve followed:
    Think positively, hold your hands
    Just so. Arrange the room facing east.
    Breathe. Exercise.
    Speak your truth. Listen with
    Intention. All this: a guarantee no
    Disappointment will visit
    And you’ll have what you want.

    But what if it's all here? As is.
    The mother's death, the best
    Friend's decline, the son’s
    Deceit and the day the snow
    Fell silent in a picture-book
    German park and you were in
    no hurry.

    - Rebecca del Rio
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  3. TopTop #3722
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Shoveling Snow With Buddha

    In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
    you would never see him doing such a thing,
    tossing the dry snow over a mountain
    of his bare, round shoulder,
    his hair tied in a knot,
    a model of concentration.
    Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
    for what he does, or does not do.
    Even the season is wrong for him.
    In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
    Is this not implied by his serene expression,
    that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?
    But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
    one shovelful at a time.
    We toss the light powder into the clear air.
    We feel the cold mist on our faces.
    And with every heave we disappear
    and become lost to each other
    in these sudden clouds of our own making,
    these fountain-bursts of snow.
    This is so much better than a sermon in church,
    I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
    This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
    and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
    I say, but he is too busy to hear me.
    He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
    as if it were the purpose of existence,
    as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
    you could back the car down easily
    and drive off into the vanities of the world
    with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.
    All morning long we work side by side,
    me with my commentary
    and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
    until the hour is nearly noon
    and the snow is piled high all around us;
    then, I hear him speak.
    After this, he asks,
    can we go inside and play cards?
    Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
    and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
    while you shuffle the deck.
    and our boots stand dripping by the door.
    Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
    and leaning for a moment on his shovel
    before he drives the thin blade again
    deep into the glittering white snow.

    - Billy Collins
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  5. TopTop #3723
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    One Robe, One Bowl

    My Life may appear melancholy,
    But traveling through this world
    I have entrusted myself to heaven.
    In my sack, three sho of rice;
    By the hearth, a bundle of firewood.
    If someone asks what is the mark of enlightenment
    or illusion,
    I cannot say "wealth and honor are nothing but dust."
    As the evening rain falls I sit in my hermitage
    And stretch out both feet in answer.

    If you speak delusions, everything becomes a delusion;
    If you speak the truth, everything becomes the truth.
    Outside the truth there is no delusion,
    But outside delusion there is no special truth.
    Followers of Buddha's Way!
    Why do you so earnestly seek the truth in distant places?
    Look for delusion and truth in the bottom of your hearts.

    - Ryokan
    (translated by John Stevens)
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  7. TopTop #3724
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Five Precepts On Happiness

    1

    Though your friends and family
    will likely try
    to save you from it,
    yours is nobody else’s
    business or responsibility.

    2

    You cannot cause,
    manufacture or manipulate it.
    It comes, if at all,
    as gift to be received
    with gratitude.

    3

    Hope to receive it
    and prepare by giving away
    what you least want to lose.
    On this point
    Jesus and Buddha dance.

    4

    Refuse to carry the burden
    of maintaining it.
    That’s unnecessary baggage,
    will betroth you
    to a boulder and a hill.

    5

    If you receive some,
    scatter it like seed.
    Sharing assures preservation.
    As with manna,
    held tight, it rots.

    - Bonnie Thurston
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  9. TopTop #3725
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Danse Russe
    If when my wife is sleeping
    and the baby and Kathleen
    are sleeping
    and the sun is a flame-white disc
    in silken mists
    above shining trees,-
    if I in my north room
    dance naked, grotesquely
    before my mirror
    waving my shirt round my head
    and singing softly to myself:
    “I am lonely, lonely,
    I was born to be lonely,
    I am best so!”
    If I admire my arms, my face,
    my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
    against the yellow drawn shades,-

    Who shall say I am not
    the happy genius of my household?
    - William Carlos Williams
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  11. TopTop #3726
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Call

    Women in black picked up their violins
    To play, backs turned to the mirror.
    The wind died as it does on the best days
    To hear better their dark music.
    But almost at once, seized by a vast amnesia,
    The violins slumped in the women’s arms
    Like naked children fallen asleep
    Among the trees.
    Nothing it seemed could ever again stir
    The motionless bows, the violins of marble,
    And it was then that in the depths of sleep
    Someone breathed to me: “You alone can do it,
    Come immediately.”

    - Jules Supervielle
    (translated by Geoffrey Gardner)
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  13. TopTop #3727
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Benediction

    Dreaming in the last land of dementia,
    Torso stiff, limbs frozen,
    Steve kneeling by your side
    Arranging long now unbending legs
    Into the chair Mimi chose
    To hold inarticulate love,
    Your rigid arm reached out in blessing.
    Three times you touched his head.
    “Son", you said.

    - Ruah Bull
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  15. TopTop #3728
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Last Dog In The World

    The last dog in the world

    stands outside the dismantled city

    A forest of buildings falls down
    inside him. When he sleeps

    he dreams of forests, but awake
    he can’t remember leaves

    or the soft sound
    that floated down from above
    preceding the beneficial
    manifestation of food.

    Or who it was
    who was always
    with him.

    The last dog in the world
    is afraid to regard his tail.

    Can’t smell the earth anymore

    since all scents left by other
    have evaporated. And all
    others have evaporated.

    For these reasons it’s difficult

    for the last dog
    to travel anywhere.

    Instead he curls up in the corner
    of a former gas station, under a pile

    of leaflets declaring the End
    of the World. Or under the other

    leaflets arguing that
    The World Will Go On, the world
    will always go on. The first

    pile of leaflets, apparently,
    has won. But the dog doesn’t
    know this. What’s paper to him, anyway?

    What are days? Just him and
    the left-over spiders.
    Him and the rusted hinges
    and oil refineries and cars stopped

    in their tracks on the empty
    highways.

    How long can a last dog
    live like this? The world goes

    on and on.

    - Sarah Messer
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  17. TopTop #3729
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In Black
    (written when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003)

    The day they started bombing (they, not we
    Because we do not have bombs), I put on black.

    I folded away red, yellow, rage, and
    Hope. I tucked greens, blues, anticipation
    And desire in a neat corner
    And I put on black.

    The day they started bombing (they, not we
    Because we do not have bombs) I stacked olive, tan,
    Quietude and rest in the cabinet.
    And I put on black.

    The day they started bombing (they, not we
    Because we do not have bombs) I watched orange
    Shower up in spectacular sparks like
    A desert bonfire. I put away my scarves, silver bracelets,
    Amulets and laughter.
    And I put on black.

    The day they started bombing (they, not we
    Because we do not have bombs,) I felt
    The air being sucked out of me
    In great gulps of teal, fuchsia, pained
    Shades of purple. I felt the air wheeling over as
    I put on black.

    The day we started bombing (we because no matter
    How I refused, they used my name anyway)
    I folded up joy, like a Bedouins tent, bright,
    Fringed and billowing and put on black.


    - Rebecca del Rio
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  19. TopTop #3730
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Turn your words prophet


    Take your words prophet and turn them
    to seed
    press them
    into the palm
    of the earth
    give each one
    a finger of light
    let them rest
    as long as they need

    Take your words prophet and turn them
    to softly falling rain
    on the Sierra Nevadas
    send them
    rushing down
    dusty valleys
    filling dry wells
    and parched imaginations

    Take you words prophet and turn them
    to music
    join the love song
    of the phoenix
    strike fire from
    the heart of man*
    till the last notes
    fade in a trail of smoke

    Take your words prophet and turn them
    to ears
    listen, listen now
    to the human
    mind feeling
    its way back
    to the body

    Take your words prophet and
    let them hang
    in the wind
    blowing this way
    and that
    clean white
    sheets on a line

    Take your silence prophet and throw it
    wildly
    to the end
    of time
    leaving nothing
    but the echo
    of breaking
    waves


    *’Music should strike fire from the heart of man,…………..…’ Ludwig van Beethoven

    - Rachel Parry
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  20. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  21. TopTop #3731
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Wild Geese

    You do not have to be good.

    You do not have to walk on your knees
    For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
    You only have to let the soft animal of your body
    love what it loves.
    Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
    Meanwhile the world goes on.
    Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
    are moving across the landscapes,
    over the prairies and the deep trees,
    the mountains and the rivers.
    Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
    are heading home again.
    Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
    the world offers itself to your imagination,
    calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
    over and over announcing your place
    in the family of things.

    - Mary Oliver
    Last edited by Barry; 04-16-2018 at 01:32 PM.
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  23. TopTop #3732
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Clichés of Our Times

    I am not so blessed or so not blessed, being a lapsed
    Unitarian who believes only in oaks and sunlight,
    nor am I honored, a once-bright thought now sunk
    into meaninglessness on everyone’s lips, one of so many


    clichés of our times, and I certainly don’t deserve anything,
    good or bad, a ridiculous notion, as if we could bend fate
    in our own hands. What happens is merely what happens.
    We manufacture the stories after, to make proper sense


    of the random world, but they confer blame on the innocent,
    by and large they serve us ill. All that counts in the end
    is practice, letting whatever come closer in, sitting beside
    those trusted friends: the delightful and the unacceptable,


    busted fan belt in evening traffic, the diagnosis, that sudden,
    unexpected, dreamed-of poetry prize, the lottery win.

    - Molly Fisk
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  25. TopTop #3733
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Damnedest Finest Ruins



    Put me somewhere west of East Street where there's nothin' left but dust,

    Where the lads are all a hustlin' and where everything's gone bust,

    Where the buildin's that are standin' sort of blink and blindly stare

    At the damndest finest ruins ever gazed on anywhere.


    Bully ruins - bricks and wall - through the night I've heard you call

    Sort of sorry for each other cause you had to burn and fall.

    From the Ferries to Van Ness you're a God-forsaken mess,

    But the damndest finest ruins - nothin' more or nothin' less.


    The strangers who come rubberin' and a huntin' souvenirs,

    The fools they try to tell us it will take a million years

    Before we can get started, so why don't we come and live

    And build our homes and factories upon land they've got to give.


    "Got to give"! why, on my soul, I would rather bore a hole

    And live right in the ashes than even move to Oakland's mole,

    If they'd all give me my pick of their buildin's proud and slick

    In the damndest finest ruins still I'd rather be a brick!

    - L. W. Harris
    (After the San Francisco earthquake April 18, 1906)
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  27. TopTop #3734
    Roland Jacopetti's Avatar
    Roland Jacopetti
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    My father's family lived in San Francisco when the earthquake struck; my grandfather ran a bar on Union and Laguna Streets in Cow Hollow. Not long after the quake, while the fire was gathering strength,a rumor began to circulate that the entire San Francisco peninsula was going to sink into the ocean. That was enough for the Jacopettis; they loaded up their horse and wagon and headed for the Ferry Terminal. Upon arriving, they found the last ferry was full, so my grandfather bribed the ticket sellers and got on board. They reached Oakland, and camped in the hills along with many other San Franciscans and watched the fire, which appeared to be engulfing the entire city.

    Many years later, thinking of the Quake and Fire in '06 and my father being born in '07, I asked him if he had possibly been conceived at the camp in the Oakland hills. He smiled, appearing a little embarrassed, and said, "Well, that's what they always used to tell me."

    I grew up in San Francisco 1938 (2 years old when we moved from Beach Street in the Marina to Green and Laguna, one block above Granpa's tavern [he subsequently had a bar and restaurant at #1 Columbus Avenue, in North Beach.]) to 1955, when I left home to seek fun and adventure (found quite a bit of both.) That Green and Laguna house, by the way, was built in 1891, and survived the catastrophe.

    Roland

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    The Damnedest Finest Ruins
    ...

    (After the San Francisco earthquake April 18, 1906)
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  29. TopTop #3735
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In The Absence Of Bliss

    Museum of the Diaspora, Tel Aviv

    The roasting alive of rabbis
    in the ardor of the Crusades
    went unremarked in Europe from
    the Holy Roman Empire to 1918,
    open without prerequisite
    when I was an undergraduate.

    While reciting the Sh’ma in full
    expectation that their souls
    would waft up to the bosom
    of the Almighty the rabbis burned,
    pious past the humming extremes
    of pain. And their loved ones with them.
    Whole communities tortured and set aflame
    in Christ’s name
    while chanting Hear, O Israel.

    Why?
    Why couldn’t the rabbis recant,
    kiss the Cross, pretend?
    Is God so simple that He can’t
    sort out real from sham?
    Did He want
    these fanatic autos-da-fé, admire
    the eyeballs popping,
    the corpses shrinking in the fire?

    We live in an orderly
    universe of discoverable laws,
    writes an intelligent alumna
    in Harvard Magazine.
    Bliss is belief,
    agnostics always say
    a little condescendingly
    as befits mandarins who function
    on a higher moral plane.

    Consider our contemporary
    Muslim kamikazes
    hurling their explosives-
    packed trucks through barriers.
    Isn’t it all the same?
    They too die cherishing the fond
    certitude of a better life beyond.

    We walk away from twenty-two
    graphic centuries of kill-the-jew
    and hail, of all things, a Mercedes
    taxi. The driver is Yemeni,
    loves rock music and hangs
    each son’s picture—three so far—
    on tassels from his rearview mirror.

    I do not tell him that in Yemen
    Jewish men, like women, were forbidden
    to ride their donkeys astride,
    having just seen this humiliation
    illustrated on the Museum screen.

    When his parents came
    to the Promised Land, they entered
    the belly of an enormous
    silver bird, not knowing whether
    they would live or die.
    No matter. As it was written,
    the Messiah had drawn nigh.

    I do not ask, who tied
    the leaping ram inside the thicket?
    Who polished, then blighted the apple?
    Who loosed pigs in the Temple,
    set tribe against tribe
    and nailed man in His pocket?

    But ask myself, what would
    I die for and reciting what?
    Not for Yahweh, Allah, Christ,
    those patriarchal fists
    in the face. But would
    I die to save a child?
    Rescue my lover? Would
    I run into the fiery barn
    to release animals,
    singed and panicked, from their stalls?

    Bliss is belief, but where’s
    the higher moral plane I roost on?
    This narrow plank given to splinters.
    No answers. Only questions.

    - Maxine Kumin
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  31. TopTop #3736
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I Don't Miss It

    But sometimes I forget where I am,
    Imagine myself inside that life again.

    Recalcitrant mornings. Sun perhaps,
    Or more likely colorless light

    Filtering its way through shapeless cloud.

    And when I begin to believe I haven’t left,
    The rest comes back. Our couch. My smoke

    Climbing the walls while the hours fall.
    Straining against the noise of traffic, music,

    Anything alive, to catch your key in the door.
    And that scamper of feeling in my chest,

    As if the day, the night, wherever it is
    I am by then, has been only a whir

    Of something other than waiting.

    We hear so much about what love feels like.
    Right now, today, with the rain outside,

    And leaves that want as much as I do to believe
    In May, in seasons that come when called,

    It’s impossible not to want
    To walk into the next room and let you

    Run your hands down the sides of my legs,
    Knowing perfectly well what they know.

    - Tracy K. Smith
    (Tracy K. Smith is the United States Poet Laureate)
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  33. TopTop #3737
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Love This Miraculous World

    Our understandable wish
    to preserve the planet
    must somehow be
    reduced
    to the scale of our
    competence.
    Love is never abstract.
    It does not adhere
    to the universe
    or the planet
    or the nation
    or the institution
    or the profession,
    but to the singular
    sparrows of the street,
    the lilies of the field,
    “the least of these
    my brethren.”
    Love this
    miraculous world
    that we did not make,
    that is a gift to us.

    - Wendell Berry
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  35. TopTop #3738
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I have a propensity for adding images to poems, please don't be annoyed.
    The photo background image is by: André Kértesz

    Name:  Miraculous-World.png
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Size:  168.3 KB
    Last edited by Barry; 04-22-2018 at 09:19 AM.
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  37. TopTop #3739
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Fern Hill

    Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

    About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

    The night above the dingle starry,

    Time let me hail and climb

    Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

    And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

    And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

    Trail with daisies and barley

    Down the rivers of the windfall light.

    And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

    About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

    In the sun that is young once only,

    Time let me play and be

    Golden in the mercy of his means,

    And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

    Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

    And the sabbath rang slowly

    In the pebbles of the holy streams.

    All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

    Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air

    And playing, lovely and watery

    And fire green as grass.

    And nightly under the simple stars

    As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

    All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

    Flying with the ricks, and the horses

    Flashing into the dark.

    And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

    With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

    Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

    The sky gathered again

    And the sun grew round that very day.

    So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

    In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

    Out of the whinnying green stable

    On to the fields of praise.

    And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

    Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

    In the sun born over and over,

    I ran my heedless ways,

    My wishes raced through the house high hay

    And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

    In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

    Before the children green and golden

    Follow him out of grace,

    Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

    Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

    In the moon that is always rising,

    Nor that riding to sleep

    I should hear him fly with the high fields

    And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

    Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

    Time held me green and dying

    Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

    - Dylan Thomas
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  39. TopTop #3740
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Diving into the Wreck


    1.

    First having read the book of myths,
    and loaded the camera,
    and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
    I put on
    the body-armor of black rubber
    the absurd flippers
    the grave and awkward mask.
    I am having to do this
    not like Cousteau with his
    assiduous team
    aboard the sun-flooded schooner
    but here alone.

    2.

    There is a ladder.
    The ladder is always there
    hanging innocently
    close to the side of the schooner.
    We know what it is for,
    we who have used it.
    Otherwise
    it is a piece of maritime floss
    some sundry equipment.

    3.

    I go down.
    Rung after rung and still
    the oxygen immerses me
    the blue light
    the clear atoms
    of our human air.
    I go down.
    My flippers cripple me,
    I crawl like an insect down the ladder
    and there is no one
    to tell me when the ocean
    will begin.

    4.

    First the air is blue and then
    it is bluer and then green and then
    black I am blacking out and yet
    my mask is powerful
    it pumps my blood with power
    the sea is another story
    the sea is not a question of power
    I have to learn alone
    to turn my body without force
    in the deep element.

    5.

    And now: it is easy to forget
    what I came for
    among so many who have always
    lived here
    swaying their crenelated fans
    between the reefs
    and besides
    you breathe differently down here.


    6.

    I came to explore the wreck.
    The words are purposes.
    The words are maps.
    I came to see the damage that was done
    and the treasures that prevail.
    I stroke the beam of my lamp
    slowly along the flank
    of something more permanent
    than fish or weed

    7.

    the thing I came for:
    the wreck and not the story of the wreck
    the thing itself and not the myth
    the drowned face always staring
    toward the sun
    the evidence of damage
    worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
    the ribs of the disaster
    curving their assertion
    among the tentative haunters.

    This is the place.
    And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
    streams black, the merman in his armored body.
    We circle silently
    about the wreck
    we dive into the hold.
    I am she: I am he

    whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
    whose breasts still bear the stress
    whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
    obscurely inside barrels
    half-wedged and left to rot
    we are the half-destroyed instruments
    that once held to a course
    the water-eaten log
    the fouled compass

    We are, I am, you are
    by cowardice or courage
    the one who find our way
    back to this scene
    carrying a knife, a camera
    a book of myths
    in which
    our names do not appear.

    - Adrienne Rich
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  40. TopTop #3741
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Wildpeace

    Not the peace of a cease-fire
    not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
    but rather
    as in the heart when the excitement is over
    and you can talk only about a great weariness.
    I know that I know how to kill, that makes me an adult.
    And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
    how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
    A peace
    without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
    without words, without
    the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
    light, floating, like lazy white foam.
    A little rest for the wounds - who speaks of healing?
    (And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
    to the next, as in a relay race:
    the baton never falls.)

    Let it come
    like wildflowers,
    suddenly, because the field
    must have it: wildpeace.

    - Yehuda Amichai


    (Translation by Chana Bloch, in This Same Sky, ed. by Naomi Shihab Nye)
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  41. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  42. TopTop #3742
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Carmel River

    The Carmel is a lovely little river.
    It isn’t very long
    but in its course
    it has everything a river should have.

    It rises in the mountains,
    and tumbles down a while,
    runs through shallows,
    is dammed to make a lake,

    spills over the dam, crackles among round boulders,
    wanders lazily under sycamores,
    spills into pools where trout live,
    drops in against banks where crayfish live.

    In the winter it becomes a torrent,
    a mean little fierce river,
    and in the summer it is a place for children to wade in
    and for fishermen to wander in.

    Frogs blink from its banks
    and the deep ferns grow beside it.

    Deer and foxes come to drink from it,
    secretly in the morning and evening,
    and now and then a mountain lion
    crouched flat laps its water.

    The farms of the rich little valley
    back up to the river
    and take its water
    for the orchards and the vegetables.

    The quail call beside it
    and the wild doves
    come whistling in at dusk.
    Raccoons pace its edges looking for frogs.

    It’s everything a river should be.

    - John Steinbeck
    (From “Cannery Row”)
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  43. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  44. TopTop #3743
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    earthworm


    they intertwine our loving with our death,
    these earthworms mating with both sides of love.
    a gentle rain has coaxed them here above
    their buried realm. they squirm in pungent breath
    of earthen, dark decay. they take their time.
    they hold affection long as if too sweet
    to rush. when their endearment is complete,
    i blush to see them ease through leaf and grime—
    it’s not for science that i watch, but joy.
    these wizards of fertility for dirt
    are connoisseurs of sex as well as rot.
    while mending blessed humus we destroy,
    they might become a meal for snake or bird
    and teach profound acceptance of our lot.

    - Sandy Eastoak
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  45. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  46. TopTop #3744
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson



    The Horse

    I cannot leave the image of the horse in the water,
    the horse thrown overboard in the middle of the ocean
    on a moonlit night, the horse following

    the slow-moving ship, eyes fixed
    on that only other object on the water. It did not
    ask to come. It did not willingly leave

    the field where it ran, its mane rising up in waves
    with each step. It did not like the stinging
    in its eyes. The taste of salt no longer

    brought pleasure. Its nostrils flared and its body
    grew heavier. Around it, long after the ship disappeared,
    circles were reaching in every direction, one outside the other.


    - Matthew J. Spireng
    Last edited by Barry; 04-27-2018 at 01:24 PM.
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  47. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  48. TopTop #3745
    Dorothy Friberg's Avatar
    Dorothy Friberg
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The sad word here is 'thrown'.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    The Horse

    I cannot leave the image of the horse in the water,
    the horse thrown overboard in the middle of the ocean
    on a moonlit night, the horse following...
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  49. Gratitude expressed by:

  50. TopTop #3746
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Extra, Extra

    All hail the yellow flag of spring waving on the earth,
    the fields striking light against the bell of the sky
    in one triumphant peal announcing revolution.
    Sing hail to the marching band in its rows of thousands,
    hail to the buds on the branches like droplets of milk
    about to bloom in a cup of black tea. Hail breakfast.

    All praise to weeds, to fennel, thistle, miner's lettuce,
    to foxtail and rattlesnake grass, horseradish, duckweed,
    to moss and lichen, to goldenback fern. Praise outlaws.
    Praise their persistence and their disregard for safety,
    the way they pass through fences as if through open doors.
    Praise to the uncountable numbers of their beauty.

    And thanks for nothing. Thank you for this embarrassment
    of useless gifts, this bright paper covering the box
    of earth. Thank you for the fecund grave, the open mouth
    of the river in constant, irresponsible flood.
    Thanks for all that goes to waste, unasked for, unwanted:
    this love, in such profusion, that does not care for us.

    - Yosha Bourgea
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  51. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  52. TopTop #3747
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    the new world

    in the hot months
    the maps are singing
    of places beyond the everyday


    and I see
    Columbus
    packing his bags with hopes
    and diseases
    leaving for a world
    that he didn’t want to find

    how often we’ve headed
    for the new world
    finding everything
    the maps had promised:
    a plotted landscape
    a measured sea

    these maps have made the world flat
    do not use them

    they can show us
    all there is
    but there are no roads
    to where we have to go

    - Lynn Mally
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  53. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  54. TopTop #3748
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What I Teach 3rd Graders

    I teach how to shake hands
    and raise hands
    and clap hands
    to appreciate.
    How to listen
    how to wait
    how to hold a pencil
    (not a gun).

    I teach that every sentence
    has a subject
    (The man)
    and a predicate
    (is shooting children)
    and some have a prepositional phrase
    (in their classroom.)
    I teach them to pause
    at a comma, to stop
    at a period
    and a ? means you are asking
    (Why? Why? Why?)

    I teach them to multiply
    legs on dogs
    fingers on hands
    (not shootings in schools),
    and how in subtraction you start
    with the bigger number
    and when you’re done taking away
    you have less.
    (17 less in Parkdale, 15 less in Columbine, 27 less in Sandy Hook.)

    I teach about places
    (unmarred
    by children murdered at school),
    the lives of people
    who have made a difference
    (not a massacre),
    how water can be absorbed
    or repelled
    (like blood on linoleum)
    and that some words, like repel,
    mean more than one thing.

    I teach them to walk quietly
    in a line when the fire alarm sounds,
    to duck and cover
    until the earth stops shaking,
    and to lay on the floor
    (like fish in a barrel)
    if a bad man comes.

    What I don’t tell them
    is in that hellish haze
    of gunfire and screams
    I plan to toss them like ragdolls
    behind bookshelves,
    stack them like cordwood
    behind cubbies,
    that my only calculation
    will be how many can I save,
    how many will I leave to die?

    So when I rescue
    a spider from the sink
    scoop it into a paper cup
    set it down among green leaves,
    they breathe as one, relieved,
    because I’ve taught them
    it’s wrong to kill
    small creatures.

    - Lisa Shulman
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  55. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  56. TopTop #3749
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In The Month of May

    In the month of May when all leaves open,
    I see when I walk how well things
    Lean on each other, how the bees work,
    The fish make their living the first day.
    Monarchs fly high, then I understand
    I love you with what in me is unfinished.

    I love you with what in me is still
    Changing, what has no head or arms
    Or legs, what has not found its body.
    And why shouldn't the miraculous,
    Caught on this earth, visit
    The old man alone in his hut?

    And why shouldn't Gabriel, who loves honey,
    Be fed with our own radishes and walnuts?
    And lovers, tough ones, how many there are
    Whose holy bodies are not yet born.
    Along the roads, I see so many places
    I would like us to spend the night.

    - Robert Bly
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  57. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  58. TopTop #3750
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Name:  May-Bly.jpg
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    (Slusser Rd. off of River Rd. —Fall of 2017)

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    In The Month of May

    In the month of May when all leaves open,
    I see when I walk how well things
    Lean on each other, how the bees work,
    The fish make their living the first day.
    Monarchs fly high, then I understand
    I love you with what in me is unfinished.

    I love you with what in me is still
    Changing, what has no head or arms
    Or legs, what has not found its body.
    And why shouldn't the miraculous,
    Caught on this earth, visit
    The old man alone in his hut?

    And why shouldn't Gabriel, who loves honey,
    Be fed with our own radishes and walnuts?
    And lovers, tough ones, how many there are
    Whose holy bodies are not yet born.
    Along the roads, I see so many places
    I would like us to spend the night.

    - Robert Bly
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